After several seconds Jamie rested with her mouth open. Then Flip put his hands on the back of her head and thumped up into her face until he released a shocking burst of semen that Jamie swallowed without thinking. Was this what Taffy had been doing? Jamie wondered. Holding her jaw slack while boys blasted semen into her mouth? Jamie’s throat spasmed as she wondered what the difference was now between herself and Taffy Longue. Was it simply the number they had each taken in?
“That was totally great.” Flip pulled up Jamie and kissed her, his tongue flitting in and out of her mouth. “Now flip back.”
“Huh?” Jamie was feeling nauseous and dreamy, as if she were floating away from the current reality.
“Flip back,” he giggled. “Get it, flip back.”
“Oh, yeah, like you, Flip.”
“Yeah! You’re going to flip back for Flip!” Jamie lay back and put her knees up, grasshopper style.
Flip planted his shoulders at her feet.
“Relax,” he said, before ducking into her crotch. Flip lapped at Jamie like a poodle at sweaty toes, with ineffectual little licks.
Jamie stared at the beige, vinyl swirl-patterned wallpaper.
She wondered if Brett’s mother had chosen the wallpaper or if it just came with the mobile home. She wondered if Brett’s parents had ever had oral sex in the mobile home.
She wondered if Taffy Longue let the boys do this to her or if she just “ate and ran.” Then she worried about what she would say to Flip—surely he would want to know if she was enjoying this. Could she tell him that taking a shower with a strong nozzle felt better than this? Could she tell him she would rather be sitting in the Abe Lincoln theater on Main Street in Disneyland? Could she tell him that just because she now did the things that Taffy Longue did she really wasn’t anything like Taffy? Jamie would never wear a tube top to school, for example, or a terry-cloth shorts jumpsuit with the shorts no bigger than a pair of underpants. And Jamie would never write on the third stall of the C quad bathroom, “My Mother is a fucking Bitch and my father is a fucking Prick and they’re fucking each other because they fucking deserve each other. Fuck them, Taffy.” Jamie thought that graffiti was as destructive to a society as littering and all her friends could vouch for the fact that Jamie never littered!
“Feel good?” Flip mumbled into Jamie’s crotch.
“Yup.” Jamie looked at the door to the bathroom—it was so narrow! She wondered how obese people who owned
mobile homes managed the doorway. Did they make special doors? Or did they just take the door off and squeeze into the bathroom bare butt first? And what about oral sex? Would an obese man’s stomach obscure his penis so as to make oral sex impossible? Would a man performing oral sex an obese woman just lift her stomach, rest it on his head, and carry on?
“Think you’re gonna come yet?” Flip asked. “ ’Cause my jaw’s getting, like, totally tired.”
“Yeah, any second.” Tammy and Debbie had talked about coming. They talked about orgasms that made their toes shiver. Jamie shut her eyes and internally focused on her toes. Nothing was happening. And then she felt a stirring near Flip’s mouth and she wondered if it was an orgasm peering out from deep inside somewhere, or if it was just that she had to pee. The urge became stronger and Jamie was convinced that if Flip went on much longer she might begin urinating right then, on his face, an act that would surely end their relationship and put her in the oral history books with the likes of Kenny Marino, who was caught masturbating against a tree in his backyard when a group of kids were cutting through his yard to a lemon orchard.
“I’m done!” Jamie put her hands on Flip’s ears and lifted him like an urn.
Flip pushed up to Jamie’s face and kissed her. He smelled chalky and slightly sour and Jamie couldn’t help but think how odd it was that their genitals were now meeting through their mouths, each imbued with the other’s juice.
“I gotta pee,” Jamie said, and she went to the narrow door of the bathroom, opened it, and entered. Once inside she sat on the toilet and stared at her face in the mirror mounted over the sink. The urge to pee vanished.
“Don’t be disappointed,” she whispered to herself in the mirror. Then she looked at the stripes on the wallpaper and began to count them as if she were trying to lull herself to sleep, right there, on the toilet.
When Jamie returned to Flip he was sleeping, body spread limply across the sheets, one arm bent up by his head, the other sticking out as if he were pointing to the bathroom. Jamie put on her clothes, went to the kitchen, sat at the table, and turned on the TV. The Munsters was on channel 11. She watched, silent and still, wishing her head was as hollow and clanking as Herman Munster’s so she could stop thinking about the ways in which her body would never be the same.
Jamie hoped Flip wouldn’t be able to come to her parents’
aura-reading party as there was a good chance it would eventually turn into a swim party. Lately, Jamie had come to realize that every moment with Flip was not perfect.
The boredom of an isolated surfing beach with no friends wasn’t perfect; the discomfort of Flip licking her in search of her orgasm, until she was as raw and swollen as a diaper-rashed baby, wasn’t perfect; the idea of being with Flip while her parents frolicked naked wasn’t perfect. But Flip called on the night of the event and said he could come, of course, as he had no more obligations that summer than Jamie did. Betty had slipped him the invitation one afternoon while Jamie was in the bathroom. Jamie said nothing to her mother about her discomfort with Flip’s attending as Betty’s and Allen’s usual reaction to anything that caused their daughters embarrassment or shame was to boldly continue the embarrassing or shameful act in the hope that their daughters would become desensitized to it.
“There’s really nothing to do,” Betty told Flip, who showed up an hour early, offering to help out. Betty was
standing in the kitchen wearing bell-bottom jeans and a maroon silk blouse, untucked, flowing.
“Mom hired caterers,” Jamie said.
“Chumash,” Betty said.
“Chumash?” Flip said. “That is totally gnarly. I didn’t know Chumash catered.”
“Chumash are beautiful people,” Betty said.
“Chumash believe in four celestial gods,” Jamie said.
Allen walked in. “Chumash are ripping me off,” he said.
“No way,” Flip said. “Chumash wouldn’t rip anyone off.”
“It costs a fortune to have Chumash. I don’t know why your mother wants Chumash.” Allen looked at Jamie as if she could explain. “Since when are Chumash known for their culinary skills?”
“Allen,” Flip said, “it’s way cool to hire Chumash. I mean, man, we owe them.”
Allen looked over at Flip and contorted his mouth as if he’d just bitten into an orange seed.
“Thank god Renee’s not here,” Jamie said.
“Why don’t you want your sister here?” Allen asked.
“Your sister’s a wonderful person.”
“She thinks aura readings are fake,” Jamie said. “Remember when you went to that aura reading at the Gants’
house?”
“How could you fake an aura reading?” Betty said. “It’s right there. You can see it.”
“Does your sister have blond hair?” Flip asked. “I think I maybe remember seeing her at school.”
“Black hair,” Jamie said. Unlike her friends’ homes, where framed photos of the family covered grand pianos and corner tables whose only apparent purpose was to hold frames, there were no pictures of Jamie and Renee
displayed in the house. Jamie often felt that photos of herself and Renee might be a good thing—something to remind her parents that they had two people in their charge, two people to keep track of, to come home for, to lock and unlock doors for.
“You know how you fake an aura reading?!” Allen said.
“The same way you fake being a Chumash. If you say it, everyone believes it.”
“I believe in the Chumash celestial gods,” Jamie said, although she had never really thought about whether she believed in them or not.
A knock sounded from the kitchen door. Betty gave hush-up eyes to everyone and went to let the caterers in.
Betty was overly friendly, as if she were making up for some past wrongdoing, as she showed the sturdy, thick woman and toreador-looking man around the kitchen.
Allen, Flip, and Jamie watched.
“Well,” Betty said, “let’s let them do their stuff.” The lights were off and the living room was lit with candles perched on every flat surface: the grand piano, the windowsills, the coffee table, the hearth. Jamie had always found the living room a little ominous with its worn Persian rugs, black leather chairs, and massive unframed paintings.
That night, lit only by candlelight, she thought it could have been a room in a haunted house. There were fifteen people, including Jamie and Flip, gathered in the room. The aura reader was blond, thin, German; she looked college-age but spoke with the authority of an old woman.
“I hope everyone remembered to wear a bathing suit—the only way to truly see the aura, is to see it reflected off bare
skin.” The aura reader slowly enunciated each word as if she were translating from German.
Lois went first. She stood in the center of the room wearing a baggy yellow bikini. Jamie thought she looked like a woman waiting for the doctor in an exam room. She was followed by a fat woman in a leotard, whose skin folded out at the arm and leg holes and looked as soft as under-baked dough. Then it was Betty’s turn. She stood and removed her clothes until she was completely naked.
Jamie listened to Flip’s breathing beside her; she felt his body growing tense. The aura reader walked slowly around Betty, bouncing her hands Marcel Marceau–style against an invisible contour.
“Beautiful,” she said. “You have a beautiful deep orange aura.” Betty opened her mouth and smiled. She looked peaceful, so relaxed that one could almost forget she was naked. And Jamie did forget she was naked, until Flip took her hand and pushed it onto his crotch so she could feel his solid erection.
Jamie jerked her hand away and fled into the kitchen.
Five minutes later, Flip joined Jamie in the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” Jamie was at the counter, eating a bowl of pine-needle soup the Chumash man had given her.
“Something wrong?”
She leaned into his ear and whispered, “You’re grossing me out with the boner for my mom.”
“That was for you!” Flip said.
“Pardon?” the Chumash lady said.
“So you’re Chumash, huh?” Flip sat on the stool beside Jamie and smiled at the woman.
“I’m from Mexico,” she said. “He’s Chumash.” She pointed at the man with her thumb.
“Cool,” Flip said.
“You like Chumash?” the man asked.
“Chumash are cool,” Flip said.
“Chumash used to own Santa Barbara,” Jamie said.
“Mexico owned it once, too,” the woman said.
“Now look who owns it!” the Chumash man said, and he laughed as a keg-bellied man, wearing only white cotton briefs, walked in with an empty wine glass.
When Jamie finished her soup, Flip insisted that they skip the rest of the aura reading and go out in the backyard to look at the stars. They settled in a patch of soft grass; Jamie folded her arms behind her head and sighed. She was baffled by moments when she didn’t see absolute perfection in Flip. Before their first date Jamie couldn’t imagine that anything Flip Jenkins did or said could be wrong or unappealing. But now, here in her backyard, he didn’t seem like Flip Jenkins, he seemed like a Labrador who could think only about food, who would snap your half-eaten burger off your plate while you sneezed, who assumed everyone wanted him on their couch, or their bed, where he’d leave behind blankets of hair without once thinking about the person who had to clean that hair up.
Flip rolled over and mounted Jamie.
“I am so horny,” he said. “I swear, I’m about to explode.”
“Gross.” Jamie pushed him off. “You’re horny from seeing my naked mother!”
“No way,” Flip said. “I swear, I was just sitting there and thinking about you standing in that room naked and thinking that maybe someday your bosoms would be as big as your mom’s, and I swear, it was all thoughts of you and then I—” Flip began to grind against Jamie, reminding her uncomfortably of Tammy’s black Lab, Tigger, who always tried to hump Jamie when she was on her period.
“Flip! You had an erection from my mom!” Flip rolled back.
“Okay,” he said. “So what? So what if I had an erection?
Your mom has, like, totally awesome tits. How could I not have an erection?”
“She’s my mom!”
“It’s, like, so what? I mean, if you stuck a picture of some Playboy model in front me I’d probably get an erection, too. You don’t understand dicks. Dicks think for themselves, okay? You see big juicy tits and your dick gets hard even if those tits belong to your girlfriend’s mom, okay? I mean, fuck. I couldn’t help it.”
“Okay, that’s fine. But I just can’t fool around knowing that your boner started with my mother.”
“Whoa,” Flip said, and he sat up as he noticed Allen, wearing only his underpants, pacing around the pool.
Allen paused at the deep end, slipped off his briefs, and dove in.
“Please don’t say anything about my dad’s dick.”
“I could barely see it from here, although it did look kinda bouncy.”
“Please, Flip, please think about me for a second. I don’t want to hear about my dad’s dick.” Jamie imagined Labrador Flip ripping open a Hefty bag, spewing wet, smoldering garbage on the floor as he searched for a stringy chicken bone while Jamie stood beside him scolding, No!
“Man, you don’t have to worry about my boner anymore.” Flip laughed.
Allen had pulled himself out of the pool and was staring over at Jamie and Flip, water skimming down his body. Flip waved.
“Allen!” Flip motioned for Allen to join them.
“Oh my god.” Jamie turned her head.
Allen picked up a towel that was draped over a boulder and wrapped it around his waist.
“Your mother!” he said, as he loped toward them with his lopsided gait.